Monthly Archives: January 2009

Now a days every where from television to radio we hear about how bad the economy is. Sure enough the economy is not at its best but still the business is being continued. It has not stopped the company from doing business. The question is if the company has restructured itself to deal with the slow economy and revamped their marketing strategy to wither the wave of bad economy. What I always believe is that the smart companies always innovate itself even during the crisis and become more efficient and stronger than ever before. In Chinese language crisis means danger and opportunity. So with recent economy’s context the bad economy being the crisis can be turned in to an opportunity by innovating your restaurant business into more efficient with more effective online marketing using several free social media tools available. All you have to do is see how your restaurant business can use some of the social media tools and have a great competitive advantage over your competitor and gain the business even during this kind of slow economy.

Right now some of the restaurant might have dine in and take out only. If you have more than one revenue stream that is great. I think as a restaurant you should have several revenue centers to be profitable. It makes more sense especially during the slow time when you don’t have much dine in customers.

2 ways your restaurant can increase your sales even during bad economy.

1. By adding delivery service and using online automated ordering system.
2. By adding catering service and promoting on youtube.com

By adding just a delivery service you created one center of revenue center. Let’s say if some body orders for an amount over $50 will be delivered with $5 fee. See now you have double gains here. First thing by just offering the delivery service you were able to sell that extra $50 and without it you would not have made that $50 and possibly many more of that $50 in sales. Secondly you also made $5 in delivery service fee. Well when you have one delivery then it might not make sense. But imagine over a time if you grow that to say 20 deliveries. Now suddenly you made $1000 in sales and on top of that you made $ 100 on delivery charge fee. Now you might be thinking it is too much work and you don’t have much people during the busy lunch or dinner time. Well this is where online tools comes for rescue. You can create online ordering system by having your menu online. You can use foodler.com and set your menu and online ordering system with them. It is free to have your menu on their site. They do the online marketing. However you pay only based upon how many sales you make. So it is a win-win proposition. You use the online ordering system and you pay only when you make the sales. Your return on investment is at least guaranteed. When customers order online from a remote location the order comes directly to your fax. You don’t even have to bother to sit on the phone for several minutes wasting your valuable time from busy lunch hour. With online order it is all automated. You don’t have to pick up the phone and several orders can be placed at once with out having to put those customers on hold for ever. If some customers call for delivery order or any kind of order all you do is direct them to online ordering site. The ordering process will be so easy and efficient.

Second thing that I see with most of the restaurant is that they don’t offer catering. I understand it is extra work. But if you do it right the pay off is worthwhile and more stable than the dine in business some time is not predicable. It is like hit or miss. But once you create another revenue center which is catering, it balances your dine in sales for the whole week incase it happens to be slow that day. Even $2000 or $5000 of extra cash per month would make a huge difference. I have seen some restaurants making extra $10,000 to $17000 and in some case even more depending upon the high or low volume restaurant. Again for the online ordering if you need it you can still use the foodler.com and they would include both catering and regular menu on the site. You might have another concern that how can I manage the delivery. In the beginning you or one of your managers can do it. Typically you might have one or two catering during the lunch time to begin with. When you start picking up the catering business then you could either hire another extra person for catering delivery/helper at the restaurant with your catering sales justification. If you are not inclined to hire just for delivery, then you could look for some local delivery companies that might one to do that job for you on demand basis. But the down part is that they want some percentage of the sales or certain fee. So you have to judge which route would be right for you.

Watch the video how Mexican Restaurant - Los Gringos Locos is smartly promoting their catering business on you tube video. Lets say some one is looking for Mexican catering service around Los Angeles area. Upon watching the above video on You tube who do you think would that person choose. Obviously the normal choice would be Los Gringos Locos. They have visual display of their product and service and more importantly it has social validation by those satisfied customers. That alone is powerful and persuasive enough for anyone to go with them especially when you have that 120 % guarantee. Try to take some idea from the Mexican Restraurant – Los Gingos.One of the smart thing you can do is buy You tube pay per click advertisement. You can start with as less as $20 or $100.You control the marketing budget. You only pay when some potential client clicks the video. The interesting thing is that the ad will cost you may be couple of cents per click and if that customer orders lets say just $1000 for one catering order you made $500 solid profit as the profit margin in catering is typically 50 % or sometimes even more. Can you imagine the return on investment you are getting out of this You tube video advertising. Apply some of these strategies and techniques and you will see how you can battle even the toughest economy.

There was a report on CNN that one of the jewelers did a special promotion to boost their holiday sales. If I remember correctly it was something like this- the promotion would run for certain days. The customer could participate in the promotion by buying the jewelries and the jewelries would be free if there was snow fall on the last day of the promotion or on certain day. It was like a raffle. Buy Jewelries and Win a chance to get it for free if you happen to be lucky and that it snowed on that particular day. Consequently with that creative promotion they were able to make more sales than ever even during the down economy. The point behind this story is that if you use creative marketing ideas that are effective and affordable then your restaurant business should be able to you’re your product in the form of dine in, delivery or catering even during the down market and virtually make your restaurant business a recession proof.